When God’s beauty seizes our hearts, it fills our senses with joy. That we can perceive beauty at all is a gift from God. But that we can perceive his beauty is a gift more precious than gold. This is why David’s earnest desire is to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord all the days of his life (Ps. 27:4).
But how can we apply a theology of beauty to our home or work environments, so we train our hearts and minds to constantly perceive God’s beauty and daily enjoy his presence?
I learned an answer to this question by cleaning up my room and keeping it clean.
God’s Beauty and Our Restlessness
Beauty reminds us that the human condition is not plagued by ignorance. We are not creatures of reason whose salvation lies in education, knowledge, or information. Far from it.
Human beings are beauty-seekers, and the human condition is plagued by restless idolatry. We have traded the glory of the creator for created things and constantly crave lasting satisfaction from temporary things (Rom. 1:22, Jer. 2:10-13).
Our hearts find rest when God opens our eyes to see the beauty of Jesus. In him, we receive what cannot perish, inherit what cannot spoil, and enjoy what will never fade (1 Pet. 1:3-6).
God’s beauty quietly calls our attention and graciously exposes the futility of all its imitations. It is why the hymn writer says, “Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look full in his wonderful face. And the things of earth will grow strangely dim, in the light of his glory and grace.”
God’s Beauty and Our Workspaces
For the longest time, I did not pay attention to the look and feel of my workplace. It felt like a tedious, wasteful thing to pursue —a distraction from “real work.”
From the time we moved into the house, for more than a year, I had unopened boxes, unorganised papers, a box full of hoarded objects, and a shell of a workspace—empty and void.
So, over the past month, I took responsibility for my workplace instead of procrastinating the pursuit of order. I spent time cleaning up, sorting, organising, discarding, and arranging things to make it an inspiring place for creative labour.
I wanted to make a conscious effort to make beauty a part of everyday work life. So I purposefully placed tiny, meaningful things in plain sight—mementos from my wife, dried leaves my daughter has painted, pictures of family and friends, tiny souvenirs, indoor plants, even a YouTube slideshow of paintings I can glance at while I work.
What is around you that could benefit from the labour of creating order out of chaos?
What can we put in plain sight—in our places of work, play, rest, and worship—to remind us that we live by faith, not by sight?
God’s Beauty and Our Minds
In the process of pursuing order, God’s creation story has been at the forefront of my mind. It paired well with something I learned while preparing for my 12th standard business studies examination: “A place for everything and everything in its place.”
Beauty is the thrilling outcome of bringing order out of chaos. It is why God saw everything he had made and behold, it was very good (Gen. 1:31).
Like an untamed horse, I have a naturally restless mind. But an unruly work environment does not serve a restless mind. It only inflames anxiety and adds to the restlessness. Anxious minds benefit greatly from an orderly physical environment.
Beauty is to the soul what a cup of cold water is for the body. It is the antidote to restless hearts, traumatised minds, chaotic situations, complex problems, and fast-paced lives.
If trauma is a sign of disorder, beauty is the antithesis of chaos. Trauma-touched lives know the feeling of theft, death, and destruction. But beauty awakens our souls to perceive what we could not imagine, feel how we have never felt, and learn what reason alone cannot teach us.
Today, I feel the value of my mother’s pleas to clean up my room when I was young.
She would be pleased with what my workspace looks like now.
God’s Beauty and Our Spiritual Formation
In all this, little did I know I was participating in a pattern of spiritual formation where God instructs his people to use physical things to bring eternal things to mind.
For instance, he commanded his people to attach tassels to the corners of their garments. It was a reminder to obey his commands (Num. 15:37-41). Tassels do not talk. But in God’s economy of beauty, they could tell people to remember to obey the Lord.
In different ways, God wanted his people to use visible things to stay tuned with invisible things—words on doorposts, stones from a river, and tiny little boxes. (Deut. 6:9, Joshua 4:1-9, Deut. 11:18).
Most pertinent to the church today is the Lord’s Supper—physical elements that turn our attention to the beautiful eternal reality of our union with God and his people.
The Lord’s Supper is not a meal for the body; it is a meal for the heart—to refresh our hearts, renew our minds, and remind us of how God turned spiritual orphans into his beloved.
The Beauty Behind All Beauty
Though God gives us an appetite for beauty, he does not permit any beautiful thing to satisfy our hunger for it (Jer. 2:10-13, Rom. 1:20).
Beautiful things can thrill our senses, but they cannot satisfy our hearts. Only the beauty of God can do that (Ecc. 3:11).
In Paul Tripp’s article, The Doctrine of Glory, he says, “God intentionally placed us in a world jam-packed with glory. From trees to flowers to mountains; from mashed potatoes to steak to lemonade; from thunderstorms to sunsets to snowfalls – all of these things were designed by God to tingle our glory sensors. But, it’s important to understand that every created glory is meant by God to function as a spiritual GPS that points us to the only glory that will ever satisfy our hearts, the glory of God.”
A beautiful thing is most beautiful when it is able to direct your heart to the beauty behind all beauty—the grace of God.
The Most Beautiful Hope We Have
Preparing a physical room can fill you with the joy of knowing how Jesus is preparing an eternal place for us (John 14:2-3).
Today, we live in unfinished rooms with groaning hearts, weary bodies, and tired souls. Tomorrow, he will welcome us with joy into the beauty of a new creation, give us whole hearts, renewed bodies, and souls that are full of rest (Jude 24-25, Rev. 21:1-5, 10-11).
But our hope is not set exclusively in the distant future. It is rooted in history and something we can enjoy here, now, today (Rom. 1:1-6, 8:18; 1 Pet. 1:3-5).
So naturally, Paul prays for God to open the eyes of our hearts to know the hope that we have (Eph. 1:17-23).
Meditating on the good news of Jesus Christ leads to the beauty of wonder. What kind of God chooses undeserving residences for his abiding presence? (2 Cor. 4:7)
Fittingly, John invites us to behold the manner of God’s love: “See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are” (1 John 3:1).
Nothing in all creation is as beautiful as the nature of God’s love for us in Christ Jesus.
